Similar to peer institutions' policies, the College's non-recording option, which was instituted in its current form in 1973 and grants College departments discretion in determining the number of NRO-eligible courses, encourages students to pursue subjects outside of their majors while sometimes detracting from the rigorous nature of the classroom environment, according to students and professors.
The NRO policy, which allows students to set a pre-determined minimum acceptable grade for a course, can be invoked up to three times in a students' undergraduate career for department-approved NRO courses.
"It gives students the freedom to try new things," economics professor Bruce Sacerdote '90 said. "The downside is that when students fall below their mark, they've lost all grade incentive to try hard."
Students cannot count non-recorded courses toward distributive requirements or major requirements, but the policy still has benefits, according to students.
"It is a way for students to take a class they wouldn't necessarily take without really worrying about doing badly," Taylor Bradley '15 said. "You can learn about a subject you're really interested in without being stressed or overwhelmed because it will not effect your GPA."
While students cannot change the status of an NRO-designated course after the second week of the term, they can opt for the NRO in an unlimited number of courses throughout their four years at the College.
"Abolishing the policy would discourage students from taking a third challenging class out of pure interest," Bradley said. "There will always be people who abuse certain policies, but I think the NRO is really beneficial, so it's not worth taking a tougher stance."
The anthropology, art history, education, studio art, film and media studies and writing and rhetoric departments do not offer any NRO-eligible courses, while other College departments, including computer science and humanities, have only set one course as non-NRO-eligible, according to the Organizations, Regulations and Courses website.
"We have a very linear major, and almost everyone in our courses is an economics major," Sacerdote said of the economics department, whose only NRO-eligible course is Economics 2, a course designed for non-economics major students.
The economics department's minimum GPA requirement for its majors and the strong participatory nature of its courses led to the adoption of the current policy over 25 years ago, according to Sacerdote.
"It's all trade-offs," Sacerdote said. "You can imagine that other departments had the exact same thoughts we did but came out slightly differently on the costs-benefits."
Ada Cohen, chair of the art history department, said she has never encountered a student who said he or she did not take an art history course because he or she could not use an NRO on the class, which suggests that a department's decision to not use the NRO is not a deterrent to most Dartmouth students.
"The NRO policy is based on an uneven playing field, so to speak, where the professor is assuming that all students are putting in their best effort only to learn eventually that this was the wrong assumption to make," Cohen said.
Cohen said she believes that the more traditional pass-fail system, where both the professor and students share the same set of expectations, creates a better learning environment.
At Brown University, where all courses are eligible for pass-fail, students will generally take one out of four classes as pass-fail, according to Andrew Li, a sophomore at Brown.
"If we're really interested in a subject, we can take that class for academic interest and academic exploration," Li said.
Students must set a course as pass-fail by the fourth week of the term, he said.
Last winter, Dartmouth Student Assembly's Academic Affairs Committee drafted a letter that explored various policy options for expanding the NRO's scope and extending the deadline to later in the semester. The letter, which was addressed to multiple academic deans, was never completed.
"The goal is to sit down with individuals in the Dean's Office and try to make a logical case for changing the NRO Policy," Student Assembly President Suril Kantaria '13 said.
The current Student Assembly administration is still gathering information before officially proceeding with any type of policy action, Kantaria said.
"It clearly affects the academic environment and the way students prepare and really apply themselves in every class," Sacerdote said of the College's current policy.
Sacerdote said that the NRO's current scope strikes an appropriate balance between encouraging students to explore courses while still providing grading feedback and incentives in other classes.
"You set the grade limit," Emily Uniman '15 said. "You do get a sense of how you're doing in the class it gives you flexibility. You can end up getting credit or alternatively get an NRO."
Yale University, whose "Credit/D/Fail Option" is very similar to Dartmouth's NRO program, encourages students to take higher-level seminars, according to Carolyn Forrester, a sophomore at Yale.
"It allows you to prioritize things that are more important and relevant to the things that you are studying," Forrester said. "You take a wider variety of classes."
At the beginning of each term, Dartmouth's Office of the Registrar confirms with each department which courses will be NRO eligible and which will be "out of bounds," College Registrar Meredith Braz said in an email to The Dartmouth.
"It's a good policy," Bradley said. "I wouldn't do more than three counts because it would be abused, but I wouldn't do less because it's really important for students to take classes they are interested in without impacting their well-being."
Staff writer Emily Brigstocke contributed reporting to this article.
